NFL Announces Footage, Interview Changes For Broadcast Partners

Summary

• The NFL is implementing new policies for more engaging gameday interviews with coordinators and coaches.
• Access to locker room pregame footage could reveal more about teams, but privacy concerns arise.
• These new rules continue a trend of forcing players and teams to offer more access to behind the scenes aspects of life as a pro athlete.

The NFL has long been one of the more restrictive sports when it comes to player and personnel access on gameday.

Most pregame, halftime and post-game interviews on the field amount to nothing more than a myriad of platitudes, as coaches and players are too focused on the game and opponent to offer reporters and fans anything of substance. At best, these moments produce viral memes because of the team’s refusal to answer questions. At worst, they’re sixty-second wastes of air time.

The league is now instituting new policies in an effort to make these segments more entertaining and informative. Offensive and defensive coordinators will now be subject to these interviews throughout the game (at the end of quarter breaks or halftime), and pregame footage from the locker room will now also be allowed to air on live television.

This new policy follows from the testimony that the NFL gave during the Sunday Ticket Trial saga, when they stated that all NFL head coaches would be required to submit an interview during each game. Now, the league has clarified that the network broadcasting the game can request either coordinator to perform the interview in place of the head coach.

Will Head Coaches Let Coordinators Perform Interviews?

Certain teams may refrain from making their playcallers available

It’s worth noting that each team will have the right to tell broadcast partners ahead of time which coaches and/or players are available to be interviewed during the game.

Certain teams will allow their coordinators to perform the task, either as a means of letting the head coach focus on the game at hand or shielding him from the public spotlight during poor performances.

Other squads will refrain from letting their top assistant coaches from speaking, perhaps out of competitive and privacy concerns. In that sense, teams like the Philadelphia Eagles that have former head coaches as coordinators (Vic Fangio, DC) could have an advantage in being able to provide multiple coaching personnel who are well-versed in the fabled language of “coach-speak”.

Teams may also be wary of parading their best assistant coaches around, lest they publicly show the rest of the league that one of the coordinators is clearly ready for a head coaching gig elsewhere.

As per Mike Florio of NBC, Cathy Yancy, NFL Vice President of broadcasting rights, testified during the trial that these new policies will apply to all teams during all games, without exception.

“All of the clubs are going to have to make a head coach available live for an interview during the game. Each team has to provide a head coach [or coordinator]; one in the first half, one in the second half. And that’s for all teams, and it’s available for all TV partners.”

Another aspect to keep in mind with these new policies – and the privacy concerns that follow them – is the new rule surrounding pregame footage.

The locker room is a sacred and hallowed place in the NFL, and allowing outside cameras inside the team’s safe space will rub many the wrong way. Past instances in which players have recorded a locker room speech have often been handled swiftly and with firm punishment from the head coach.

Until we see them put into practice, these new rules merely continue a trend by the league to increase fans’ access to the daily life of a professional football athlete.

Source: Richard Deitsch | The Athletic